For more than a year now, most media outlets have been repeating over and over the standard line about the party in power in the White House losing seats in Congress during the mid-term elections. The reports are predictable and frankly, they're getting boring. The fact that polling data, at this point, is not supporting the trend, doesn't seem to deter most reporters and news media sources who keep showing us the President's job approval ratings and using that as their only piece of evidence to support the traditional trend.
Politics have changed, drastically, over the past five years. Some trends that were reliable and predictable have proven to be very unpredictable and unreliable in a time when voters seem to be less educated and informed, and more fickle, than at any point in modern American history. Our quirky way of electing a president, inflating minority influence in a way that undermines democratic choice, has produced two minority-elected Presidents this century, one who lost the popular vote by the largest margin in any of the previous minority-elected presidencies.
Even the President's job approval rating is defying definition and clarity. Some media sources have decided that it is more sensational to use a little phony drama, choosing to emphasize the lowest outlier among the polls in order to make things appear worse than they are. It would be just as easy to focus on polls showing the current job approval at 47%, which two polls in the composite list are showing, as it is to focus on the one poll that has him at 38%. But clearly, the President's job approval rating is having much less of an effect on people's potential vote choices as it may have had in past mid-term elections, a lot less, in fact.
It is unprecedented to have a former President whose own personal popularity is a factor in election choices on the Republican side. But since Trump wants to create the impression that he may run again, and wants to control who gets elected from the GOP, his own "job approval rating," or approval numbers, are as much of a factor for Republicans as the President's are for Democrats. And Trump's negative numbers, getting slowly higher as time passed, as more comes out about January 6th, and as the possibility seems to increase that he will run again, stand at 67%. And that's not an outlier.
But getting inside the numbers in the polling data state-by-state and race by race, the Democrats are doing far better than the gloom and doom reports of the mainstream media that remain anchored to Presidential job approval ratings. Battlegrounds have moved into red states, or should I say, recently red states that have become purple, like Arizona and Georgia, where numbers in house races and senate races are much further in the favor of the Democrats than they were at this point in 2020. Ohio, a red state in the last two Presidential elections, appears to be giving Tim Ryan a lot of good news. Pennsylvania looks like a potential blue wave, at least, for its statewide elections. The governor's race in Texas is now a dead heat, as are the Senate races in North Carolina and Florida. As the data firms up, and the primaries produce candidates, we'll see where the house races go, but at the moment, there's no sign of much of a shift, in fact, no sign of a shift at all at this point.
Kansas proved, on Tuesday, August 2nd, that turnout wins elections, and that the backlash from the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade, will indeed have a major impact on the turnout of Democrats and the outcome of the midterm elections. Voter registration has surged to record levels among Democratic party constituencies since that decision was handed down, especially among younger women and black women. The gun legislation issue is causing major panic among Republicans who are scrambling to figure out how to position themselves on the legislation now coming out, mainly to do damage control and try to keep their gun nut voters motivated to vote in November. And January 6th is the gift that keeps on giving.
Please Allow Me to Share a Few Words of Encouragement From Fellow Democrats
"I have continually argued that this election cycle is going to buck historical trends," writes Joe Trippi, of the Lincoln Project.
"The GOP has nominated a crop of loons, and continues to do so. Their policies are extremely unpopular. Their assault on women's rights has motivated Democrats like never before," he says.
I agree with that, except I will add that a majority of independent voters are also motivated to vote against the GOP "loons", as are some Republicans. It will be difficult for Republicans to lose that much support off the top and still win enough elections to become a congressional majority.
About the election results in Kansas on August 2, Trippi writes, "I cited a recent poll showing that Democrats are more enthusiastic [about voting] than Republicans post-Dobbs. But the proof is in the results. Kansas, a reliably Trump state, voted by a large margin to protect abortion rights in the state despite a heavy push from the far right. Looking at turnout numbers, this is what stands out: 90% of the Biden turnout came out to vote in favor of keeping abortion legal, while onl 50% of the Trump vote came out to support the ban."
"This is how you win a statewide election," he continues. "Energized turnout against an unpopular policy. And it clearly shows that the polling we have seen in recent weeks showing this to be a real fight is no fluke. The conventional wisdom was proven wrong last night. We are in this and we can win both houses of Congress this year. Another poll from Monmouth that came out just this morning asks, 'which party do you prefer to have in control of Congress?' Last month, it was Republicans 48, Democrats 46. Today, it's Democrats 50, Republicans 43. That's a nine point swing."
The emphasis in the quote is mine. The conventional wisdom was proven wrong last night. We're not talking about voters in Massachusetts or California, we're talking about Kansas. And we're talking about record numbers of new voter registrations across the board, everywhere, following the Dobbs decision. I've said, since the leak of the potential overturning of the Roe decision came out, that this was a sleeping giant, and that the celebration among the far right would be short lived, because the hammer would fall in the next election. Well, celebration muted, the hammer fell hard in Kansas on Tuesday.
"The other key factor," says Trippi, "is these insane candidates themselves."
He says that there is plenty of polling data to show Latino voters in Arizona in particular are turned off, and conversely, are motivated to go to the polls to vote against extremists like Blake Masters, who won the GOP nomination for the Senate seat now held by Mark Kelly, and Kari Lake, who could potentially win a very razor thin nomination for governor. Unpopular candidates, as well as unpopular policy, can also energize voters. Kelly and Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor of Arizona, offer competence and reason against the insanity of the Maga-endorsees.
"It's time for plain talk," says a post on a discussion board for Democrats. "No nuance, no nicey-nice, no soft pedaling the obvious truth. As a whole, the Republican party has been invaded and taken over by Trump and his cult of Anti-American thugs. They are not simply politicians; they are ruthless revolutionaries intent on destroying American democracy and installing a dictator like Putin or Orban."
From my perspective, that's exactly the very best reason I can think of to make sure I vote, in every election in which I am qualified and eligible to vote, at every level, from school board and city council to the presidency.
The same author notes that Republicans are openly talking about ending social security within five years. That's not just a scare tactic. Senator Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin, is on the record with a similar remark this week. That's what's at stake in this year's mid-term elections. We Americans are really not great at paying attention when politicians talk like this, but we'd better pay attention and we'd better take a good, long, hard look at all of them, including Democrats, just to make sure we're getting what we want when we vote. Ending Social Security and Medicare benefits the billionaire class, not average Americans, a majority of whom are depending on their money that they paid into the system sustaining them when they are no longer able to work. Republicans, for the most part, couldn't care less about average Americans. They always have been, and still are, the party of the rich.
That's not a tired, old message. It's the major political reality of our time, so why not keep it in front of people so they can make an informed and educated decision about who to vote for, instead of listening to some radicalized, insane, nut job, Trumpie?
Our education system was designed to be the safeguard for democracy. It is supposed to provide the nation with an educated electorate that is capable of preserving our democracy and electing a representative government by informed voters with solid critical thinking skills, who, for the most part, understand the background of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But it is having a hard time making progress against the radicalization of extremism. The results of the November 2022 election must hit the reset button, as we figure out how to handle extremism and at the same time protect free speech and freedom of conscience.
Note: To the writer of the post at DU, I want to give you credit for your words and ideas. If you read this, and would like to have an acknowledgement entered, please let me know.
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